Cigarette link to Grenfell ‘desperate’

The owner of Hotpoint, which produced the fridge freezer where the Grenfell Tower fire is believed to have started, has claimed the blaze could have been sparked by a lit cigarette.

Whirlpool Corporation is said to be claiming the blaze may not have started electrically, but “by someone throwing something … into the kitchen through the open window”, a public inquiry heard yesterday. Rajiv Menon, who represents Behailu Kebede, 45, the occupant of the fourth-floor flat where the fire started, called the claim “desperate”.